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I think that would qualify as what I described as a "wart", as opposed to saying the old board got everything right.

You chose to move to a county that was adding 5000 kids a year to it's school district, and presumably you moved to a part of the said county that was growing quickly. What you experienced was clearly inconvenient for you. What works for the district as a whole is not always going to be what works best for an individual student or family. But, while not "best", that doesn't mean what was offered to you wasn't "good".

I would not call this person's situation 'good'. I do not know this poster's exact situation, but I do know that situations like that one are rarely due to growth. Yes, most reassignments are due to filling new schools. But a substantial number of them are due to the diversity policy and they are not always in the best interests of the children involved.

I would not call this person's situation 'good'. I do not know this poster's exact situation, but I do know that situations like that one are rarely due to growth. Yes, most reassignments are due to filling new schools. But a substantial number of them are due to the diversity policy and they are not always in the best interests of the children involved.

My situation is just one example of the type of things that happened regularly in Wake County. And while there may be a greater "good" for the county as a whole, when it's your kid being sacrificed in the interest of a diversity policy, it's hard to see it as good. It's not "good" to watch a middle schooler who is new to the area having trouble making friends at school, because he doesn't live near them and can't socialize outside of school, and having difficulty making friends in the neighborhood, because he doesn't go to school with them. It's not "good" dealing with a groggy student every morning who is asked to sacrifice almost an hour and a half of sleep each night because the county, while it values diversity, doesn't match that with a busing system that can effectively serve the remote node assignments they create. I could go on an on. As good as the schools were (and yes, they were generally good), the difficulties the System's policies created outweighed all that.

I think that's a fair point, as TurborgP pointed out above, politics may have created some strange bedfellows here.

There are a lot of bright fair minded people in this forum who are on both sides of the issue. Let's hope these folks prevail and we can continue to have a legitimate discussion of the issues as they play out with each side giving those of us in the middle something to chew on without name calling and scare tactics.

My situation is just one example of the type of things that happened regularly in Wake County. And while there may be a greater "good" for the county as a whole, when it's your kid being sacrificed in the interest of a diversity policy, it's hard to see it as good. It's not "good" to watch a middle schooler who is new to the area having trouble making friends at school, because he doesn't live near them and can't socialize outside of school, and having difficulty making friends in the neighborhood, because he doesn't go to school with them. It's not "good" dealing with a groggy student every morning who is asked to sacrifice almost an hour and a half of sleep each night because the county, while it values diversity, doesn't match that with a busing system that can effectively serve the remote node assignments they create. I could go on an on. As good as the schools were (and yes, they were generally good), the difficulties the System's policies created outweighed all that.

So what's the solution when a child is bused due to overcrowding and not bused simply for diversity?

Getting rid of the diversity policy doesn't eliminate the overcrowding issue. There isn't always room for every child at the "neighborhood school".

So forget diversity for a moment. How do you deal with overcrowding without the use of busing? Even if you have more buses and later pick up times, that doens't reduce the distance one would need to travel to a less crowded school. I am genuinely interested in hearing viable solutions to this.

THis is so oversimplified it is funny. If someone builds a new 200 house subdivision in a empty field in that circle, then that school is over crowded, while the school in a more established "circle" will become less and less crowded as their kids head off to college. So either you have overcrowded and undercrowded schools as the norm using such "circles" or you redraw the circles EVERY YEAR...not sure the "don't move my kids around so much" people will like that...oh, wait, they are the ones pushing this "draw circle" ideas.

It is not as simple as the new Board members like to think it is.

That is a good point, the gov't in some form gave permits to the 200 house development, so they should have time to plan for that increase in student populations.

My situation is just one example of the type of things that happened regularly in Wake County. And while there may be a greater "good" for the county as a whole, when it's your kid being sacrificed in the interest of a diversity policy, it's hard to see it as good. It's not "good" to watch a middle schooler who is new to the area having trouble making friends at school, because he doesn't live near them and can't socialize outside of school, and having difficulty making friends in the neighborhood, because he doesn't go to school with them. It's not "good" dealing with a groggy student every morning who is asked to sacrifice almost an hour and a half of sleep each night because the county, while it values diversity, doesn't match that with a busing system that can effectively serve the remote node assignments they create. I could go on an on. As good as the schools were (and yes, they were generally good), the difficulties the System's policies created outweighed all that.

I think this post is one of the best ones on the entire topic today and for the last ten years. The greater good vs what is best for the individual. Can be very difficult to support the greater good if you see your child suffering. You might remember that in previous discussions I had post that were not real supportive of Dr. Burns and his arrogance toward anything that challenged or questioned his position on this and other topics. That is one of the reasons why I felt the way I did. There was a lack of recognition of the individual consequences and burdens created by a policy that may have had national recognition for it's aggregate value and even that was in doubt.

I think this post is one of the best ones on the entire topic today and for the last ten years. The greater good vs what is best for the individual. Can be very difficult to support the greater good if you see your child suffering. You might remember that in previous discussions I had post that were not real supportive of Dr. Burns and his arrogance toward anything that challenged or questioned his position on this and other topics. That is one of the reasons why I felt the way I did. There was a lack of recognition of the individual consequences and burdens created by a policy that may have had national recognition for it's aggregate value and even that was in doubt.

I think you're on to something every important here. Many of us were willing to put up with minor/normal amt of inconvenience (CHtransplant's experience is far from minor) because we thought we were doing it to help those less fortunate than us. But when we started really looking at the results, they just aren't there. And I believe that Burns & Dulaney went even further down this wrong path when they started to concentrate more on raising F&R at far flung schools than lowering it at high poverty ones (or implementing programs to help those schools). When low income kids who already attend a school with an F&R in the mid 20s 3 miles from home are then reassigned to a school 18 miles away that has an F&R less than 10%, something is seriously wrong. Kids need stability, especially if those kids are struggling academically or socially.

I was seeing little concern for what was happening to the children involved. In fact, WCPSS admin/staff told me on more than one occasion that they don't look at individual students, only the overall schools. Its a shell game that's not helping low income kids.

I could go on and on with evidence of how low income and minority students have been ignored and treated unfairly by the system. Suffice it to say that people aren't willing to put up with the hardships if it isn't helping anybody.

So what's the solution when a child is bused due to overcrowding and not bused simply for diversity?

Getting rid of the diversity policy doesn't eliminate the overcrowding issue. There isn't always room for every child at the "neighborhood school".

So forget diversity for a moment. How do you deal with overcrowding without the use of busing? Even if you have more buses and later pick up times, that doens't reduce the distance one would need to travel to a less crowded school. I am genuinely interested in hearing viable solutions to this.

HOnestly, I think most people understand when reassignment is due to crowding or new growth. Even in Western Wake--their complaints are more about how horribly the new growth was managed. Yes, you can expect some reassignments when you move to a growing area but some of the ones out that way were just ridiculous. More than 2 elem schools for one child? Insane.

All of the people that I've worked with in WSCA and most of the general public that I've spoken with aren't dead set on going to the exact closest school. They understand that its not always possible. But when you have 3 schools within 5 miles of your home and you're bused to one that is 10 miles away? That's where patience begins to wear thin. Just my perspective on it.

I think that we could easily come up with many things to agree on right away. Things that should just be thrown out because everybody agrees that they are assinine. Get rid of those extreme things and then we can start dealing with what is left. But good grief, people have got to stop with the name calling and hyperbole. Its just not productive.

Sort of an unofficial motto of WSCA was that we had no room for either extreme. We figured that there are 10% of people on either side of the issue who are so extreme in their views that they refuse to reason. Lop those 20% off and we're left with the 80% who probably agree more than disagree and who can work to find a compromise.

I always find it funny when people (not you necessarily, I don't remember who here has commented this way) say that supporters of the new board are pawns of the Republicans. Of course its easy to think that because that's how the media portrayed it for sensationalism. But we had Republican leaders who thought we weren't 'republican enough'. Some were angry that we didn't back Gerry Ballan instead of Prickett. Some more conservative Republicans who had been members of our group early on decided to form their own group that was identified as Republican. Of course after the fact the Republicans wanted to claim the elections as their victory and their doing. But truthfully it wouldn't have been possible if we hadn't actively sought to include everybody. We have a wide array of supporters from conservative to moderate to liberal. I'm one of the more liberal ones for sure and I've never felt like my view wasn't welcome or wasn't as valuable as any others. Many people joined us because they liked that we didn't proclaim one 'way' or idea as the right one.

The "capacity crisis" issue clearly becomes the "smoke and mirrors" farce that it is when confronted with the fact that hundreds, if not THOUSANDS, of families were categorically denied admission to a year-round school, year after year; even if they agreed to provide their own transportation and even when there were seats available, simply because they were the wrong demographic (Policy 6200).

Instead, they converted more schools to year-round and made the assignments mandatory to boost the number of poor/minority students attending the year-round schools. (Policy 6200).

If that isn't Diversity at ALL costs, I don't know what is.

What chaps my behind even MORE is the study that was done which showed that over HALF of the participants of the F&R Lunch Program were participating fraudulently - either they were getting MORE than they would normally be entitled to, or they weren't entitled AT ALL.

So we have Policy 6200, which uses the numbers of Non-F&R and F&R to create assignments, and to accept or deny Magnet applicants, and back when it was voluntary, year-round applicants and yet over half the data used is fraudulent.

As I have said before, I left Wake County rather than deal with the insanity (I don't even believe the new board can undo the Gordian knot), but I find it amazing that there are people who still blindly bang the drum for Policy 6200, even knowing all of the above......

So what's the solution when a child is bused due to overcrowding and not bused simply for diversity?

Getting rid of the diversity policy doesn't eliminate the overcrowding issue. There isn't always room for every child at the "neighborhood school".

So forget diversity for a moment. How do you deal with overcrowding without the use of busing? Even if you have more buses and later pick up times, that doens't reduce the distance one would need to travel to a less crowded school. I am genuinely interested in hearing viable solutions to this.

That is the crux of what needs to be addressed and discussed. What was a normal part of rapid suburban growth and what was for diversity policy purposes. Folks may find out that things haven't changed much only the reason. Only time will tell but we need honest discussion and with so many transplants from other areas that have experienced growth we have resources.

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